Category: Politics, Religion & Money

Doughboy on Dope

Heroes for Sale is a 1933 pre-code movie from Warner Brothers, the studio with a social conscience. Directed by William Wellman, it stars silent film actor Richard Barthelmess, who found some success in talkies.

Wellman directed the silent epic Wings, and he displays his skill with war scenes in the opening of Heroes for Sale. Barthelmess plays a WWI soldier who suffers from inoperable shrapnel in his spine and becomes a veteran with an opioid addiction.

He gets out of rehab and finds love with 20-year-old Loretta Young. The always excellent Aline MacMahon is along for the ride that includes a Capitalism vs. Communism theme.

Crapto Currency

I’m halfway through Easy Money: Cryptocurrency, Casino Capitalism, and the Golden Age of Fraud, by actor Ben McKenzie, B.S. Economics, and journalist Jacob Silverman. It’s one of the new books covered in MIT Technology Review.

https://www.technologyreview.com/2023/08/23/1077693/crypto-foul-play/

CNBC has been breathlessly covering the crypto action since it started, almost invariably with a positive spin. In this short segment there’s an attempt to discredit McKenzie’s view that cryptocurrency is a scam. Which is funny, considering all of the investment nonsense that entertainer Jim Cramer spouts on CNBC. Nobel Prize economist Paul Krugman also sees no valid economic use for crypto currency.

Speaking of economics degrees, the Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond checks on the popularity of the major in colleges.

https://www.richmondfed.org/publications/research/econ_focus/2022/q3_profession